


on ne fait pas d’omelette sans casser des œufs

by linnhe



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Ableist Language, Adoption, COVID-19, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Incest, M/M, Parent/Child Incest, Slow Burn, Substance Abuse, a dozen brand names because we're living in a capitalist hellscape, genetic sexual attraction, slight dubcon, there is no underage sex between Johnny and Mark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:28:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25898956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linnhe/pseuds/linnhe
Summary: It's entirely unexpected, the evening his son shows up. For one, Johnny hadn't even known he had a son.Mark is seventeen, bright-faced. And Canadian, of all things.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 48
Kudos: 228





	on ne fait pas d’omelette sans casser des œufs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [naom2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naom2/gifts).



It's entirely unexpected, the evening his son shows up. For one, Johnny hadn't even known he had a son.

Mark is seventeen, bright-faced. And Canadian, of all things. He explains he got into a nearby college's summer program, and that he picked it based on where Johnny works and lives. That he hadn't meant to just show up like this, but Johnny had no online presence to speak of and hadn't responded to letters.

"I'm sorry," Mark says, with a nervous smile. "I'll leave if this is all too much. I've just– I've been so pumped to finally meet you! And dude, woah, you're really tall!"

A lone cricket accompanies Mark's chattering, cutting through the relative peace of the evening. A couple doors down, a car starts up.

"Maybe you should come in," Johnny suggests, ushering Mark over the doorstep. He's not eager to have his private life picked over by a nameless neighbour. "The mosquitoes are getting in," he lets trail out after, by way of explanation.

He does have an online presence, but nothing with his full name attached. And he usually ignores mail, since his bills are automated and what gets dumped into his mailbox is scammy junkmail and religious pamphlets, addressed in such a way to make it look like it comes from acquaintances. Johnny doesn't keep up with his elderly relatives, and the only stamp his friends have ever touched was undoubtedly one drenched in ecstasy.

He sits Mark down on his armchair. There's only one, in front of Johnny's gaming set-up, attached to his TV. It's kind of dusty — he hasn't really been in the mood to play, lately. And the TV is really just for gaming, doesn't even get cable.

Johnny takes a seat on one of the armrests, one foot on the ground, one ankle pressing into his knee. He kneads it while observing Mark's face; the frizzy hair, round cheeks, even rounder eyes.

Cute kid. Zero family resemblance.

"Mark... You said your name is Mark, right?"

Mark nods eagerly, eyes twinkling.

"I'm sorry, man. But I'm thinking you've got the wrong guy. There's just no way you're my kid, I just turned thirty. I would've been what, twelve, when I conceived you?"

While he's saying it, the memory of little Minseo Lee pops into his head. A long-forgotten middle school crush, summer camp in Busan. They'd played doctor by the beach, late at night, under the cover of darkness. Johnny had barely understood how sex worked, just stuck it in while they both watched on in awe, Minseo's cream yellow dress bunched around her stomach, her small gasps drowned out by the surf. Had he even been spitting anything but clear at that age?

"Oh, uh," Mark stutters, crestfallen. "I thought the age was kinda young, yeah, I just figured–"

"What's your mom's name?"

"You mean my birth mom, right? Hold on, I wrote it it down. Um. Korean names, I can never keep'em straight." Mark rummages around for his phone, producing a note in an app. _Lee Minseo,_ it reads.

"When I was a baby, I was adopted by a Canadian-Korean couple. I mean, they're both Korean, but they're Canadian more than they're Korean. Anyways, the orphanage helped me track down my birth mom last year — she's really nice, by the way! She's an accountant now and she has a little girl with her husband. Uh, so. Yeah, she told me all about you, told me your full name and the name of your high school and what American city you lived in, back when she knew you. After that, it was kinda easy to find you, to be honest. You donate to your school, every year. Didn't move very far away." Mark has the decency to look sheepish.

Johnny can't believe his ears. He refuses to believe it was easy to find him, but it figures. These technologically-minded kids and their doxxing bullshit.

"She could have been lying to you. Did you pick a college at the word of a near stranger, to come meet another stranger, in the middle of the night?" Actually, the mettle on this kid.

"I thought about that. But the way she spoke about you, it kinda seemed like, like she really wanted me to keep it a secret. She wouldn't talk about you when her parents were present. And then I saw we matched up on 23andMe, and that settled it for me." Mark smiles beatifically at him. "Figured, if he's got the relatives feature turned on, he's at least a little curious! Even if he doesn't respond to emails!"

Curse the auntie that had given him that dna subscription as a birthday gift, so her family tree could 'look cuter'.

Johnny squints, and Mark's mien darkens a tad. He looks embarrassed, almost.

"Look, squirt," Johnny says after a few beats. Mark looks like he's ready to drink up his every word, and it causes a scratchy feeling below Johnny's skin, an itch he knows he won't be able to reach. "I'm not going to sugarcoat it: this is a lot. I'm going to need a couple of days to chew on it."

Mark had known Johnny existed for all of his life, even before he knew his name or face — he knew Johnny was real, somewhere. Fifteen minutes ago, Johnny had thought he was childfree.

"Okay, yeah!" Mark exclaims, entirely too energetic and happy. He claps and jumps to his feet, and Johnny is grateful this morning's hangover has subsided. "I figured this would all be kinda fast, it only makes sense. Yeah man, for sure, I'll come back later, we'll talk more then."

 _Come back later?_ Johnny thinks dazedly. When had that become an option?

He wants to say no, but Mark chatters all the way out the front door, gives him a tight hug that leaves Johnny stunned and has biked out of sight before he's gotten his thoughts unscrambled.

He retreats back into his house, and mouths _what the fuck_ to his hallway mirror.

\--

It's five days later when he comes home to a note taped to his door. His stomach drops before he even unfolds it; he's spent the better part of the week buried in his work and crawling into a bottle at the end of it, unwilling to spend more than a passing thought on the fact that a full-fledged high schooler existed, solely because of him.

Mark's handwriting is awful. The first family resemblance.

_Heyy it's Mark! I came by but u were out. Anyways, my finsta is meolkmeolk99, maybe it's easier if we talk there. Same un on snap but I'm figuring u don't have snap? Anyways hahaha byee ttys hopefully_

Johnny has a Snapchat. It's an entirely horny endeavour, and he's not adding his son on it. Christ, he has a _son_.

Johnny drops the note on his hallway table and proceeds to act like he's forgotten about it. He hasn't, the knowledge of it sits like a stone in his stomach, ever-present and nauseating. His anxiety is sky-high, whenever he can't push it to the back of his mind. 

A kid. He has a whole kid. A walking, talking, thinking human being.

How does he even begin to process this? What is he supposed to do? What can he even provide? Johnny is not a parent, has had zero practice and even less inclination. Mark already has a dad, and a mom twice over. He'd looked happy, fit, well-fed. Clearly clever, clearly on the way to get a decent education. There is nothing left for Johnny to add.

He goes upstairs to fire up the ancestry website, and sure enough, there's Mark. The picture of him on Johnny's family tree is dorky, and he looks no older than fifteen in it. Johnny is about to click through to his profile, but then thinks better of it, instead scrubbing his own profile from the site entirely.

The second note comes only two days later, and Johnny's heart rabbits in his chest. This one has been typed and printed, like Mark figured he wouldn't run into Johnny.

_Hey! It's Mark. I'm not entirely sure if you got my first message. Maybe the wind got it first, or like a dog or a squirel or somehing. Squirrels are kinda wiley like that. If you did get it, and you're like non-verbally telling me you don't want to know me... would you mind just outright telling me? I've probably got no right to ask this of you, but it's kinda eating at me, you know? It would really put me at ease to have a black and white answer. I know the world isn't black and white, but... do you know what I mean?_

_If this is the first message of mine you've received, please ignore above paragraph lol. Come find me on insta/snap! I'm meolkmeoik99_

Johnny squints at the username. Walks into his hallway, picks up the first note.

Two different spellings. He knows it doesn't actually matter, it's a tiny mistake, the right username would pop up if he searched. But somehow, it's enough of an excuse to keep him in limbo, never quite arriving at a decision either way.

The final note comes two weeks later. It's handwritten, very short, nearly indecipherable. Johnny finds it at 4AM, after his set ran late, and drinks after ran even later. He reads it leaned against his glass front door, by the light of his hallway. He always leaves it on. It's a habit his mother passed down to him. She'd say it kept burglars away. It would probably help more if Johnny didn't have a glass front door, but this is a rental. No point investing in a better door.

_just wanted to say sorry. won't bother u again_

Johnny can practically picture the tear stains on the scrap of paper. It's lined, thick blue lines, shit only high schoolers have. He's broken this kid's heart without even trying.

If he was any less drunk, he wouldn't be doing this. He just feels bad. Mark didn't ask to be born, didn't ask to be annoyingly inquisitive. He whips out his phone, types in the usernames on Instagram. For some godforsaken reason, both spellings are taken. He ends up adding both, shoots off a message to both.

_Hi. It's me_

Then he convinces his door lock to yield to his pathetic attempts to stab it with his house key, downs a litre of water in his kitchen and falls asleep on top of the covers, still in his club-drenched clothes.

\--

The next morning is unreasonably bright, sunlight streaming into his bedroom. It's actually insane that he chose the room with the east-facing windows as his bedroom, that it had seemed like a great and healthy idea at the time. 

He used to be overambitious.

His phone is aggressively buzzing underneath his pillow. He wrestles it free, trying to blink away the glaze of sleep and bring the screen into focus. Just as he's rediscovering how seeing works, his phone loses the last of its charge, gives one more prolonged buzz, and goes entirely dark.

"For fuck's sake," Johnny mutters, repeatedly tapping the screen and getting a little bit angry when nothing happens. Why buzz at all, then? Could've just died an hour ago and left Johnny to his nap. 

He chucks his phone across the room, and it takes him all of two minutes to drift back to sleep.

It's late noon by the time he reads his messages. He frowns in confusion at a username he doesn't recognise, which has sent him the bulk of his notifications. But then, oh, it clicks together in his brain and he grits his teeth in anticipation.

**meolkmeolk99**  
_OML YOU'RE A DJ??  
that's sooooo fucking cool oh mah gawd  
holy shit  
ok.sorry i didn't mean to swear.  
I just, I had no idea tbis was you!! I actually listen to your music, man! that's so wild, wow, the world is so small  
wait, this is Johnny right? it's just hands on decks on ur profile  
I mean, it kinda has to be to be you. no one knows my finsta. ur my first follower haha  
unless one of ur neighbours stole my note.  
that would be mad creepy.  
go away, creepy neighbour man.  
(haha no there's no way, you're the only one in that neighborhood who's cool enough to be a dj)  
anyways hi sorry, i got a little carried away.  
message me soon! _😄 _it's my last day at my summer program and it would be dope if i got to see u one more time, before i fly home_

Johnny feels more overwhelmed than ever. He doesn't know for sure why he messaged Mark, doesn't know what he'd been intending to say. Something about being in over his head, about not being ready for all this? Something like that. But writing "I would like to take it slow" seems like an overly lukewarm response after Mark's wall of text. He's not sure Mark will put himself out there again, after having been rebuffed twice already.

Although, he might. Johnny has never met a kid this eager. But then, he doesn't know many kids at all.

**sunnysideuuup**  
_hey_ 🍳 _can you do a late brunch_

He looks at his phone's clock. 4PM.

_late late late brunch. there's an ihop ten minutes from where I live. we could meet there #_

He doesn't bother looking up the address. He knows Mark can figure it out by himself.

The reply is instant.

 **meolkmeolk99**  
_now?_

**sunnysideuuup**  
_sure, yeah. i can meet you there in an hour. two tops._

**meolkmeolk99**  
_um, i don't think i can make it. im about to head to our "graduation". it's like this fake graduation party for summer school, we get a certificate and fancy fresh orange juice and the lecturers get champagne. i don't wanna miss it. i have a red eye after._

And why does Johnny feel wistful at that. He's had weeks to spend an hour with Mark, but chose not to. It's not on Mark that it's too late now. He's about to place his phone down when his screen lights up with another notification.

**meolkmeolk99**  
_but you can come, if u want? lots of kids bring a plus one. i just didn't have anyone_

Johnny types out a refusal. Deletes it because his wording is a bit too harsh. Like, what kind of plus ones were kids bringing? Their parents or their friends? Because Johnny is neither. Johnny wants to be neither.

After typing out five more refusals and deleting them all, he exhales in exasperation and agrees before he can change his mind.

**sunnysideuuup**  
_sure, yeah._

Really, what harm could it do?

**meolkmeolk99**  
_REALLY¿ YOOO. JOHNNY OMFL UR GOING TO BE THE COOLEST PERSON AT THIS PARTY_

Ah, yes. This is what instant regret feels like.

\--

Johnny cleans himself up thoroughly, shaving with the good razor and asking for Mark's input on the level of formality while picking out his outfit. Mark seems to have no clue, so he goes with a brandname turtleneck and sleek black jeans, and puts his dress shoes in the trunk. He could either keep his fit casual with his sneakers, or dress it up with the glossies.

Johnny is a man who enjoys being well-dressed, when the occasion calls for it.

The sneakers turn out to be perfect. He's on the guestlist and is ushered through with no issue. The rented party space is small but effortlessly luxurious, speaking to the prestigiousness of the attached college.

No one at the gathering pays him special mind, because Johnny is well-respected in the inner circles but, despite Mark's behaviour in his DMs, actually not famous at all. 

So no one bats an eye. 

Except for Mark, who is looking at Johnny like he hung the moon.

"Hey," Johnny says, already uncomfortable and cringing on the inside. He tries not to show it, though. Poor kid, he's just so eager. For friendship, for a connection. It's not his fault.

"Hi," Mark replies, breathless. He tugs Johnny with him, towards the table holding the refreshments. "Do you want bubbles, or freshly squeezed orange juice?"

The line sounds rehearsed. Johnny picks the juice, since he drove here. It delights Mark, because it means they're drinking the same drink.

The evening passes by uneventfully. Mark introduces Johnny as his family friend, a carefully neutral term which Johnny appreciates, and Johnny listens to the boring aspirations of pockmarked teenagers. Surrounded by his peers like this, Johnny can't help but notice that Mark is the nicest looking kid in the group. A vague sense of accomplishment fills him.

Johnny had also always been one of the best looking kids at school, as evidenced by the wealth of female attention he'd enjoyed. Still enjoyed. 

Yeah, the kid was gonna grow up to be a little heartbreaker. It was kind of cool to think about.

Then he catches himself and frowns into his glass. 

Not his kid. Not his problem. After tonight, he'd never see him again. Mark would fly back to Canada, they'd drift apart on social media, and that would be the end of that.

"Johnny," Mark says, all smiles as he looks up at him. Johnny wonders if Mark will be taller than him one day. Wasn't that how genetics worked? "I have to go soon, and I was thinking... I could drive to the airport with some of the other kids. Or you could drive me. I brought my luggage with me." His luggage turns out to be an overloaded black JanSport, so heavy Johnny is worried the straps will give out.

"I'll drive you," Johnny agrees easily. He could do Mark one big favour, give him something good to think back on. 

He regrets it as soon as they're inside the car, and he learns Mark knows how to talk without pause, and is happy to utilize that skill to its fullest power when there's no one around to make him feel embarrassed about being this way. Johnny, evidently, no longer counts as one of the people who might not like it. He can't even focus on anything the kid is saying, it's just an endless stream of inane observations and giggles. His voice is high, and objectively cute, but Johnny is not endeared.

Did he ever talk this much, as a kid? Did he ever laugh this much?

"Mark," he says, after a solid hour of it, when the throbbing in his head becomes too much to ignore. "Could you please not talk for a while? I drank too much last night, it's kind of kicking my ass."

Mark audibly snaps his mouth shut, and looks out the window. When Johnny glances at him, he sees how red Mark's neck has gone. 

"Sorry," Mark says after five minutes of silence. He sounds on the edge of mortified.

Johnny doesn't reply, doesn't want to make Mark feel better about it and possibly encourage the waterfall of words to start up again.

Mark turns his head to look at him. Johnny doesn't look back, keeps his eyes on the road, but he can feel his stare boring into him.

"I get this way sometimes, when I'm excited. I'm sorry, Johnny. Actually, I'd really like to hear some stuff about you. If you don't mind."

Johnny does mind. He doesn't want to be picked apart by this stranger. Couldn't the gesture of going to his summer school graduation party and giving him a ride be enough?

"I don't know what to say," he replies, which is half a truth.

"Like, where did you grow up?"

"Right here, in the city."

"Did you like it?" Mark asks.

Johnny shrugs. He'd liked it nor disliked it. It was just a place, and it happened to be his place. Aside from the yearly summer camps and visits to his grandparents in Korea, he'd never been anywhere else. "It's okay. I've never really thought about it that much."

"I really like it here," Mark confesses. "I mean, I like the college. I was thinking of coming back in the fall. Would that... bother you?"

Johnny shakes his head, because there's no way he's going to be petty enough to fuck up Mark's education, just to keep him at an arm's length. He could keep him at an arm's length no matter what.

"Do you like making music?" Mark asks next, and Johnny bristles. Being interrogated was not an improvement over having to listen to a monologue.

"Yeah," he says curtly. He'd been doing it since he was younger than Mark, had picked it up at the end of middle school somewhere. Initially he'd just been trying to impress girls, thought the combination of shoulder-length hair, beanies and the status of being a DJ would make him irresistible. 

That had been a correct assumption. He'd had a new girlfriend every other week.

But then the shine wore off, and he stuck with the same girls for longer. The decks' shine never wore off, though. The more he learned, the better he wanted to get at it. Until he got really good, and would reach the bottom of the poster for local festivals. 

Man, why did he stop doing those again?

Mark is chewing his lip when Johnny spares him a glance, eyes round and dark by the muted light of the dashboard. 

"Music is a great way to... express things you can't express elsewhere," Johnny offers.

"That's so cool," Mark whispers, in awe. And finally, blissfully, shuts up.

He remains quiet until Johnny is dropping him off at the airport, where he gives a perky goodbye and swears up and down he can carry his backpack by himself. It's not like there's an actual choice, since they're at the kiss and ride section of the airport.

Johnny gives him a one-armed hug goodbye by the back of his trunk, and watches Mark walks out of his life, a small figure with a too-big backpack.

\--

**meolkmeolk99**  
_listen to this_

The silence had lasted all of one month. Enough time for Johnny to stop thinking about the whole experience, except when he came across the three notes Mark had written him, still scattered across the faux-antique vanity he kept in his hallway. He should really throw those out. The vanity too. The house had come with it, and he never figured out where to put it.

And then, at the start of September, there it was. An audio file in their chat, recorded straight in the app.

He plays it while stretched out in bed, Mark's shaky voice accompanied by steady clatter of the rain outside Johnny's window. It takes a few lines for Johnny to realise Mark is trying to rap, and he laughs quietly to himself.

The text is trite, talking about how all the girls want to get in his car with him — did Mark even have a license? His voice sounds younger than ever, and honest-to-god cracks on one of the lines. If Johnny hadn't seen him before, he'd be picturing a desperately ugly kid right about now.

**sunnysideuuup**  
_good first effort. work on your pronunciation and syntax. some of the words muddle when you're trying to go fast & some sentences contain too many words, messing up your flow. do some slow raps first, get a feel for your own rhythm. do you own a metronome?_

If Mark's adoptive parents had any Asian left in them, then yeah, he'd own one. Even Johnny owned one, left over from his piano lesson days.

 **meolkmeolk99**  
_yea_ 😄 _thanks for the advice_

**sunnysideuuup**  
_have it on the slowest setting first. practice._

\--

It's another month before there's another audio file in their chat. Johnny can hear the metronome in the background. It's endearing, how hard Mark tries. His improvement is minimal, but it's there, and Johnny feels strangely elated.

**sunnysideuuup**  
_you improved. keep it up._

\--

It's four months later and he's five songs into his set when he spots him. It makes sense for Mark to be there, this was a student event after all. But he's taken aback by it nonetheless. 

Johnny hadn't really thought about the possibility of running into Mark before accepting the job — it was organised by a local community college, not the one Mark had been planning on attending. They'd never talked about his school choice again, so for all Johnny knew, Mark could still have been back in Canada.

Mark clearly knows it's Johnny at the table, but doesn't try to approach him. He just waves and smiles when he notices Johnny looking his way, and goes back to dancing with his friends.

Johnny doesn't mean to, but he keeps glancing. Mark has a distinct face, and even in the near-dark of the club, he stands out. He looks noticeably different, even though it'd barely been half a year since Johnny last saw him. 

Some of the kid has gone out of him. He stands with more confidence, has an ease and a charm about him that Johnny recognises, because that had been him at that age. There's a girl who won't stop making heart eyes. The whole thing is adorable.

 _Good man_ , Johnny thinks to himself, with private little smile. They don't interact any further that night.

\--

He gets sent a _nice set, dude_ , but it's quiet on the Mark front after that. That's a good thing, Johnny thinks. It means the kid is off living his life, enjoying his college experience. He finds himself going back to their chat from time to time, to listen to the old audio recordings. The voice crack makes him smile every time, and he finds himself anticipating it. 

A couple months in, he's listened to Mark's work often enough that he can mouth along the words, which he does. The text is still bad, but it's also fun, because Mark is having fun with it. He wants to go in and make some tweaks, so it could go on one of his tracks maybe. 

It's been a long while since Johnny last touched his own remixes, he's happy to just play other people's music these days. His SoundCloud is dusty, gets less traffic each month.

He's already in their chat when another audio file comes through, and it makes him cringe, because he knows it means the little _Seen_ popped up instantly on Mark's end.

He goes out of the chat and into a moment of life-altering embarrassment. Wasn't he becoming a bit too hung-up on this kid? Hadn't even wanted a relationship in the first place, and now he was, what? Sitting around, thinking about him fondly.

 _thought you might enjoy hearing my progress_ the notification informs him, and Johnny swipes it away and waits two weeks before listening.

\--

Mark has improved. By leaps and bounds. It's not really– it's still a spontaneous recording, done straight in the app. But it's a full minute, and on its way to be an actual song. He's rapped two solid verses and even tried his hand at a chorus, a sung line that he repeats several times. 

His voice is unsteady when singing, untrained. But there's a vulnerability and an emotion to it that makes Johnny go still.

_Oh, and I. Can't stop looking at you. Across the room. Do you feel as I feel, do you do as I do?_

The contrast between his singing voice and his rapping voice is the best part. Because Mark's voice has finally dropped, but he's still high and sweet when singing. Even his rap has improved, no longer about trying to seem cooler than he is. He's rapping about his first year at college; the stress of balancing the extra workload, being away from home, the increased social life, being in love, and figuring out how to be an adult in between all of that. 

Johnny gets to hear about Mark's entire year, condensed down to a single minute. He listens to it dozens of times, and sings the chorus under the shower. 

This isn't just misplaced pride. Mark makes catchy music.

**sunnysideuuup**  
_Mark, this is legitimately good, colour me impressed. guess you're destined to carry on the Seo legacy._

The reply comes instantly.

**meolkmeolk99**  
_haha, thanks man. means a lot, coming from you._

He's typing more, and Johnny navigates out of the chat box, feeling frazzled. 

He's tapped Mark's profile picture — a non-descript image of a square red-brick building — and for the first time, Johnny actually looks at Mark's Instagram. He is indeed its only follower. There's lots of posts, candid pictures with no description. Ugly food pictures, teenagers, concrete buildings, a room that features a lot in the past year and must be Mark's dorm. Johnny has seen a few of these on his feed before, the rare times he actually scrolls through it. 

The pictures go back years, a cluttered catalog of Mark's experiences as a teenager. Every snapshot is ordinary, but Johnny finds himself intrigued by them. Finds the exact post right after he'd dropped Mark off at the airport, a picture taken from a plane window, its description a single omelet emoji.

The six most recent pictures are all of the same person, an Asian boy with wide-set eyes and bronze skin, wearing a different brightly coloured hoodie every time. Eating, lying down, sitting on the floor in Mark's dorm room. The mischief in his eyes pops, even through the absolute shit quality of the pictures.

**meolkmeolk99**  
_i was kinda thinking, if you want, maybe we could meet up again. have that ihop brunch we talked about # my first year is finishing soon and im flying home for the summer. i don't know if i'll be back next year_

Again, a wistful feeling fills Johnny. He'd had an entire year to see Mark as often as he liked, but had made zero effort. Clearly, it was a good thing that he had no intention of becoming a parent.

**sunnysideuuup**  
_yeah. I'd like that._

\--

Brunch turns into dinner, turns into hanging out at Johnny's place. 

Mark hasn't changed that much, still talks a mile a minute. But Johnny must have changed, because he isn't annoyed in the slightest. They're in his kitchen now, Mark up on the counter while Johnny pours them both a glass of Sprite.

Mark talks breathlessly about his first year at college, a community college he'd picked based on the recommendation of his parents, to keep costs down while he was going through his required units. He might go to a nicer college next year, his grades are good enough to get a partial ride, but he also might do his year abroad. He'd met an exchange student this semester, from Korea, and it really sparked his interest in his home country.

Johnny learns the name of the boy in the six pictures. Donghyuck. 

"But he doesn't like to be called that here, because people make fun of it, because _dong_ makes them think of penis. And _hyuck_ sounds kinda, silly, I guess. But I don't think that! He's been trying out some English names, but none of them have stuck so far. He's really funny, and cool, and smart. Actually, he's kind of annoying too sometimes, but in that little brother way, you know what I mean? Actually, I don't have a little brother, but Hyuck is exactly who I pictured whenever I thought about having one. He's a year younger than I am, but already doing his semester abroad! Can you believe that? I don't think I would've done that, at that age."

"Mark," Johnny points out warmly, "you literally moved to another country for college."

Mark gapes at him for a few seconds, and then closes his mouth. He looks flattered. "It's not really the same though, is it," he says, but his pleased expression remains. "We're neighbouring countries, we speak the same language. It's not the same."

Johnny shrugs. "Still impressive, I think."

"Where did you go to college?" Mark asks.

"Didn't. Didn't seem like it'd fit me," Johnny says. He'd been earning great money with his music by the time he turned college age, had been travelling some. "My career was already taking off, I didn't see the point in putting it on pause and spending a ton to still be earning the same amount of money at the end of all that."

He still earned good money now, because even though he might have slacked in the originality department lately, his passion for his craft remained strong and he worked most days.

Mark, for some reason, seems more impressed with him than ever. "So you just decided to skip college? Just like that? Woah."

Johnny smiles sheepishly. "It made sense at the time. I was never an academic kid to begin with. I just wanted to make music. So I did."

"And what did your parents say?"

Johnny takes a deep breath. He never likes saying this part out loud, his voice devoid of emotion as he speaks. "They're dead. They both died right before I graduated high school. Carbon monoxide poisoning. I was out with friends–" he'd been out with a girl, "and when I got home, I found'em both. The exhaust pipe on our boiler froze shut." He takes a long sip of pop, staring into the middle distance. "I don't think they felt a thing. They looked so peaceful, tangled in bed together. Like they were just sleeping... not a bad way to die."

They died while already having a grandson, one country over, but none of them had known about it. It's kind of nuts.

Mark is staring at him, perfectly quiet for once. Little Mark, and his wealth of parents. It might have been enough to spark envy in Johnny's chest, had he been the type. But Johnny doesn't dwell on could-have-beens. Only misery lied down that path.

"I was already nineteen in my final year — had to redo a year in elementary somewhere. After the funerals, after selling their house so I could pay off their mortgage, I rented this place and, yeah. Here we are."

Mark looks around the kitchen. "You've lived in this place for the last ten years?" he blurts out.

Johnny looks around the kitchen too. He's never really looked at it before, is what he suddenly feels like. It's just the space in his house which holds the fridge, the thing where he chucks leftover pizza and stores beers sometimes. 

He's never cooked anything in here, isn't even sure the stove works. It's a bit dusty, but not dirty. His aunties drop by from time to time, with armfuls of kimchi and pink rubber gloves, and they always clean his place top to bottom. Johnny loves their kimchi, has it with his take-out every day. It's the only thing keeping him healthy, he thinks sometimes. He hasn't been hitting the gym as much, lately.

"Yeah," he says, after doing the mental math, "a little over ten years."

"But then where... where's all your stuff?" Mark asks, surveying the space. He hops off the counter and opens up a cupboard. It's empty. Nearly all of them are, save the lone bowl and set of cutlery for one. "I just figured you were super busy and hadn't moved your things in y– actually, sorry, this is none of my business."

Johnny empties his glass, determined to move past the topic of his empty house. "Most of my things are in my music room. The kitchen isn't really my area."

It has the desired effect. Mark's eyes seem determined to double in size. "Music room? Oiiii, I bet it's so cool, oh, can we–"

He catches himself right before begging to see it, and Johnny lets out a small laugh and takes pity on him. "Let's go look at it, hm?"

Mark inspects every single one of Johnny's vinyls, and when Johnny plays some of them, he has an awed little expression welded in place. He hasn't heard of any of the music, except for through Johnny's remixes of them.

He falls asleep on the carpet, still clutching the sleeve of the record they're listening to, his lips parted as his breaths grow heavier and even. Johnny smiles at him, reclined in his desk chair, his own eyelids heavy with sleep. It wasn't that late yet, was it? 

It's shocking when he looks at the clock on his PC and sees it's nearly 3AM, and he realizes he's easily just spent twelve hours straight with Mark. Sober, too.

"Hey Mark," he says, kicking out a foot to nudge Mark's side. There's no response. For a split second, fear has a death grip on Johnny's heart, but then he reminds himself Mark is visibly breathing and he has CO detectors in every room.

He sits forward, pushing his clammy face into his hands, having to fight back a wave of queasiness. All this, even though he'd been fine ten seconds ago. It had been a while since he last felt this panic response. Maybe it's because he talked about it. 

Johnny rarely ever talks about his folks. Has no pictures up of them. It's not personal, he doesn't have any pictures up at all. A couple of concert posters in this room, and that's about it.

He gets up and scoops Mark off the floor, the record's sleeve slipping from his small hands and thunking on the carpeted floor. Johnny cringes, certain there'll be a crease in the cardboard in the morning. But it's okay, he can buy another mint collectible. It's been a long time since someone actually enjoyed his records — he mostly uses digital conversions and more modern releases, these days.

He carries Mark to his bedroom, down the hall. The kid doesn't wake up once, so trusting. His sleeping face; he's near angelic in Johnny's arms. On the precipice of adulthood, but still a kid. Johnny can't believe he's been entrusted with something so fragile, and it feels wrong, and deep down, he wants nothing to do with it.

He puts Mark to bed, makes sure there's a pillow underneath his head. Half-covers him with his comforter. And then just looks at him.

"I can't believe you're my kid," Johnny says into the quiet of the room. He sleeps in his armchair that night, and has vivid and terrifying nightmares about his parents dying.

\--

They don't meet for years after that night. Don't speak that often, either. Mark goes abroad for a semester, and then stays abroad. There's great relations between Canada and South Korea, which eases his visa applications. He enrolls in a university Johnny hasn't heard of before, but is perpetually wearing hoodies of, and Johnny watches Mark's life unfold through his Instagram. It increasingly feels like he's looking at someone's very personal diary, but it doesn't stop him from looking. 

Donghyuck keeps making appearances, and it takes Johnny an embarrassingly long time to realize that Mark and Donghyuck are in love. It's a simple photo of the both of them laying down, their heads pressed together, eyes shining with quiet happiness. _1 year_ 💕👬, the description reads.

 _Oh_ , Johnny thinks to himself, staring at the emojis. His son loves men. How could he have missed that?

 _Congratulations_ 🍳, he types underneath the post. It's the very first comment he's ever left, and he wonders if it was okay to do. But it gets liked by Mark almost instantly, and Johnny smiles to himself.

\--

Corona hits the States, and Johnny finds himself longing for the days when he only knew it as a mildly shitty beer. He actually buys a ton of it, because it's on sale. No toilet paper, though. No wet wipes. He takes to washing his asshole in the shower after every bathroom break, desperate to feel clean. 

His days become a monotony of staying inside, drinking beer, tinkering with his music. He's got solid savings and his landlord is a cool dude, willing to lift rent duties as long as the bank has paused the mortgage payments. Johnny is actually increasing his savings now, still able to pick up occasional producing jobs online.

Then things begin closing down forcefully, and the recommendations become rules. Right when Johnny starts thinking the whole country is going to shut down, there's a knock on his front door.

"Hi," Mark mouths, already visible through the glass of the front door. He's different, but still the same. Sharper in the face. A little taller. Still not taller than Johnny, though.

Johnny opens the door, and accepts him easily when Mark steps into his arms for a hug.

"What brings you here, squirt?" Johnny asks.

"I'm sorry," Mark responds, which isn't an explanation. But there's something in his voice that says it all. He sounds wounded.

"Come in, huh? Where's your luggage."

Mark shakes his head, face still pressed to Johnny's front.

Turns out he has his wallet, his passport, the old JanSport with a change of clothes, and nothing else.

"Forgot my phone," Mark explains miserably, once they're both in Johnny's kitchen. Mark is nursing one of the Corona beers from the fridge — he's not twenty-one yet, but had the haunted look of a man who needed a beer, and it's a feeling Johnny understands all too well. "They wouldn't let me back in, I couldn't get it."

"Who wouldn't let you back in?" Johnny asks. By now, he has an ugly suspicion. But it's Mark's story to tell, and he won't make assumptions.

"M-my folks," Mark wrings out of himself, and then bursts into tears. It's the last they speak on it that day.

Mark won't let Johnny sleep in the armchair, which yes, is wildly uncomfortable, especially for someone of Johnny's stature. And Johnny won't let Mark sleep in it either, seeing how he's his guest and all.

So he places an order for an air mattress off of Amazon, and until it comes, they both sleep in Johnny's bed.

It's where he learns a lot about Mark. Endless adolescent secrets, fears and worries. There's so much of it, and Johnny wonders if he's the first to hear it all.

"Do your parents know about me?"

"No," Mark admits, having the sense to look embarrassed. He's wearing one of Johnny's pyjamas, and his whole frame is drowned out by it. "I know I should have told them about you. I should have told them years ago. But they were already so hurt about me seeking out Minseo, would often comment on how happy they were that she lived far away in Korea, where she couldn't hurt 'our family unit'. So telling them about my American dad, it just seemed like one thing too much."

Johnny didn't know that's how Mark regards him. It feels deeply unearned.

"They don't like Americans very much, um... I think the only reason they allowed me to study abroad as much as they did, was because they were glad it just wasn't the USA anymore. And I think they were proud that I was learning Korean and stuff. And I studied in Seoul, which is far away from Busan, where Minseo lives. I still saw her from time to time, though. I told her about your music, once. She was impressed and complimented your success."

It feels unreal. Two kids had made a baby by accident, and were now communicating through him, with years and half a globe between them. He wondered if he'd ever meet Minseo again.

Probably not.

American dad, Korean mom. Canadian mom and dad. The whole world had conspired to bring this child into existence, and raise him up. And now he existed in Johnny's home, in Johnny's life. And now it felt like Johnny was the only one left to look after him.

\--

"How are you and Donghyuck doing?"

Not great, Johnny has gathered, because there's been zero mentions of him in the past week. Mark's bottom lip quivers, but he can't seem to bring himself to tell his story yet. Maybe later.

It should be uncomfortable, having Mark in his home. It should feel like an invasion, like a huge adjustment — Johnny hasn't lived with other people since he lived with his parents. But instead it's like Mark has always kind of been there, one room over, downstairs. Making noises, being alive. Borrowing clothes from his closet.

A new phone has arrived for him, courtesy of Johnny, and Mark has spent the day contacting people.

"I've been in contact with my school and my profs, and they've agreed to let me do my final credits online. I mean, they're not making a special exception for me or anything. It's kind of standard procedure now," Mark explains. Johnny buys him a laptop to go with the phone, and Mark starts attending classes at their kitchen table every day. He's a good student, diligent and thorough, and it's a pleasure to watch him work.

In the evenings, Mark watches Johnny work sometimes, and all the affection Johnny has been developing for Mark is reflected back at him tenfold. It's an endless train of 'woah, you're so good at that, how do you–' and 'could you show me how–'.

Slowly, without really meaning to, they find themselves recording a song together. It has a homemade quality and it's mostly silly, but Mark is passionate about it, and it makes Johnny work harder. He watches Mark spitting raps into his microphone (the good one with the spit shield) and a pride so deep and wondrous fills him, it leaves him feeling a bit shaky.

That innate understanding for music in the other, for what works and sounds good, he wants to foster it. Help it to have the tools, so that it can blossom. He can't recall the time where he thought there were no resemblances between him and Mark. 

Outwardly, their interactions have become more shallow, all teasing jabs and dumb jokes. But on the inside, they connect. So clearly cut from the same cloth.

Within a month he buys Mark a nicer laptop, rushing because doing it quick means he can still send back the first one under the guise of buyer's remorse. This one's an Apple, built for editing and creative processes. He installs all the good software, the stuff he's collected over the years.

Mark nearly loses his mind at the sight of it, sitting primly on the kitchen table, with a little sticky note attached to it.

_From your American dad. For all the birthdays I missed. Make some cool songs_

"Dude, no way! NO WAY," he hears downstairs, and he smiles to himself. "Really! These things cost– oh my lord, this is– this is insane!" 

The volume increases as Mark is running up the stairs, and Johnny can't suppress a wide grin, full-on laughing by the time Mark storms into the music room and hugs him tight enough to risk choking him out. Johnny stands up with Mark still clinging to him, and hugs him back.

"Don't become a bum like me, hm? Make lots of music, but. Get your degree, too."

"Yeah," Mark whispers into his ear, and if Johnny feels Mark's tears wetting his temple, he says nothing of it.

\--

When the adrenalin of all the changes has worn off, the nightmares start. Mark sleeps in the music room every night now, surrounded by all of Johnny's most precious belongings. It's the only carpeted space, meaning less chill creeps up through the air mattress. It's also been keeping Johnny from staying up too late, working the hours away. Instead he goes to bed at the same hour Mark does.

But now he's also waking up when Mark does. He knows Mark doesn't mean to wake him. He doesn't come bother him, just stays in Johnny's office, and calms himself down. But it's as if Johnny has developed a keen sense just for the kid's distress. He can hear the soft groans right before Mark violently wakes up, his heavy breaths ricocheting down the hall. He cries, sometimes, muffled sobs into his pillow.

Johnny doesn't bring it up, because Mark doesn't bring it up. Not even when the skin underneath Mark's eyes goes blue with lack of sleep, and not even when his appetite start diminishing. 

When his grades start dropping, is when Johnny decides they need to try and talk it out. He understands the appeal of not talking, lord knows he's chosen that path often enough. It's easier, at first. But then it makes everything harder.

He doesn't ask directly, instead invites Mark to come look over a project he's been working on, offers him a beer. And one more. Mark relaxes, goes droopy in Johnny's desk chair. He has Johnny's headphones over one ear, the other one free so they can discuss how to finish mastering the song.

"You haven't mentioned Donghyuck in a while," Johnny points out casually, from where he's sitting on the floor. He's pretending to sort through his collection, to figure out which records can go. In reality, none of them are going anywhere.

Mark freezes for a moment, but then sags deeper into the chair. "We broke up," he offers quietly, still facing the screen. He's stopped clicking the mouse.

"That sucks," Johnny says.

"Yeah," Mark nods, looking down into his lap, his hands folding together tightly. "I... I really loved him. We were always fighting, but I kinda figured, it's just– relationships are just like that. You know? My mom and dad are always fighting, too. But then towards the end, we were _always_ fighting. Literally any time we were together. He wanted things from me that I couldn't give him, and instead of– I don't know. It got so ugly."

"Is that why you went home?"

Mark nods, staring at his hands in his lap still. "Hyuck was so mad at me, all the time. Covid finally travelled up from Daegu and hit Seoul, and I figured... I just wanted to be home for a while. It wasn't that bad in Canada yet. Actually, it was, it was worse than in Seoul. But I told myself it wasn't. I asked for a leave of absence and flew home."

"And your parents asked you why."

Mark's shoulders are so tightly wound, he looks like he might break because of sheer tension. "Yeah. They asked me why. They asked me often. I wouldn't tell. I knew– I had a feeling. My dad's a pastor. Not that that– I just knew it wouldn't be okay. But Hyuck called me, screaming. He had figured out I left the country entirely, without even saying goodbye. He thought we were just ignoring each other for a while — we did that, sometimes. He sounded _so_ betrayed." Mark shakes his head, sounding disgusted with himself. "I know I shouldn't have left like that. I knew it before I did it. It was ugly of me. But Hyuck has a way about him. I knew that if– if I told him goodbye, he would've talked me into staying. And then we'd have gone right back to making each other miserable."

"What happened next?" Johnny prompts gently.

"Mom heard Hyuck. I didn't even have him on speaker, but she heard every word, he was screaming so loud. Her Korean isn't great, but only an idiot wouldn't have been able to piece it together at that point. She grabbed my phone, saw the pictures. You've seen some of those, but– not these ones." He rubs his hand down his face, looking up at the ceiling. "Fuck, if only I'd deleted those fucking pictures. I don't think they would have been as mad, if it wasn't for those. It was just too much, I think. Their star pupil son, dropping out of college and refusing to give a reason. And then, pictures of Hyuck's dick in my mouth. I really thought my dad was about to have a stroke."

"And then...?"

"They told me if I was going to sully our beliefs, it wouldn't be underneath their roof. Told me to grab my shit and get out. I was, I dunno. I couldn't think straight. I grabbed stuff like, like I was going for a sleepover with a friend, or something. I got damn lucky my passport was still with my wallet. But mom was still holding my phone, and I didn't even think to ask for it. Dad grabbed me and physically shoved me out the front door... he shoved me really hard."

Mark is quiet for a few minutes after that, rubbing his hand up and down his pale arm, as if soothing the ghost of a bruise. "They said God doesn't love me anymore. So it kinda made me feel like... Hyuck, mom, dad, God, ... all gone in the same day. It was a lot. And sometimes I think, they're probably wrong? He still loves me, because He made me this way, and His love is eternal. But mostly I think, fuck, what if they're right." He sniffs, so quiet it's barely audible. 

Johnny feels a level of disgust and hatred he's never felt before. These fucking people, going out of their way to adopt a baby, fill his head with their beliefs, only to throw him away like trash. So sanctimonious. What good was love if it was conditional? 

For the first time in years, he feels bitter sadness that his mom is gone. She would have loved Mark. Loved him to bits. He can almost hear her voice, nagging him for being too skinny, rubbing his stomach, aigoo, a boy his age should be eating everything in sight. She would have loved to nag her grandson in just the same way. He's not sure they would've been on board with the gay thing off the bat, but Johnny would've been there to set them straight. Because, he realises with painful clarity — he loves Mark. He loves him fiercely. He doesn't know when he started, but he knows he'll never stop again.

He scoots closer, and places one of his hands on Mark's thigh, giving it a comforting pat. The expanse of his hand covers nearly all of Mark's thigh. "Your parents are in the wrong, kiddo. When it comes to this, yeah, they've got it twisted. There's nothing wrong about love. When people love each other, that's just. It's beautiful."

Mark all but sinks into Johnny, sliding from the chair and clinging to him in a full-bodied hug that allows him to interlock his legs and his arms behind Johnny's back. Johnny has never been hugged like this, not once in his entire life. Like the other person might die if he lets go.

He's not letting go, though. He wraps his arms around Mark's waist, and kisses his shoulder. Mark's breathing is rapid and irregular, but he's not crying. He just holds on with all his strength, like this is what will piece him back together.

"Do you love me?" he asks, voice quiet but surprisingly steady.

"Yes," Johnny says, with no hesitation. Because he feels none.

When Mark leans back to look into Johnny's eyes, it's with a sincerity and clarity that makes Johnny's breath catch. And then the kiss he presses to Johnny's lips causes more of the same.

"Wuh–?" Johnny comments, and is kissed again for his trouble. Chaste pecks, that leave behind a tinge of beer, which he tastes when he sucks his bottom lip into his mouth.

Just how severely had Johnny fucked up? What had he done to make Mark believe–

"I know it's not like that, for you. It's just that," Mark lets out a deep, shuddering exhale, "you're the first guy I ever liked. And I was so sure you'd hate me for it. I mean, I hated me for it. I still do, I think."

"I don't hate you," Johnny blurts out. He could never.

One more kiss, featherlight. And then the hug continues for a while longer, until Mark gets up and goes back to work. Johnny doesn't say anything else for the remainder of the evening. He has no words for how he feels.

\--

There's a shift between them, afterwards. Johnny calls it the honesty shift in the privacy of his own mind, because for a while, there's no more dancing around subjects, no more half-baked answers. Anything he wants to know, Mark tells him plainly. And Johnny repays him by being equally forthcoming. 

Mark had shown him his entire heart, fearlessly. Johnny doesn't know what to do except for meet him at that same level. He's not sure if this is for better or worse. Should there even be a person in the world who knows everything about you, your every deepest secret? 

He has never felt this vulnerable, and yet, he embraces the opportunity. He feels reckless, like a much younger man. The more Mark asks, the more he talks. It's like layers of weight are being peeled back, things he didn't even realise he was still shouldering.

"What did you and Hyuck fight about?"

"Anal," Mark replies, not looking up from his summer coursework. "I'm aware how banal that sounds, don't worry. He just really wanted it, and actually, I wanted it too, at first. But I couldn't make it work. I'd clench up, I teared, I bled a lot. It was a fiasco from beginning to end. I tried looking up info, I tried everything. But no matter what we tried, I just kept bleeding."

"And he got mad at you for that?" Johnny asks, while chopping carrots. It was a thing they had begun doing lately, under Mark's skilled direction. Johnny would clean and cut all the ingredients, was good at it, after being taught how. And then Mark cooked. The knife was new, as was the cutting board, and the wok.

"I don't know. Yes? No? It wasn't really about that, I think. It was just the pulse point for all our other unresolved shit. He'd want to be intimate with me, and I'd already be fearful, already feel like a failure, about to be covered in gross, gloopy blood, about to be in pain. Meanwhile, gay porn is like, they take dick the size of coke cans. But I couldn't even take my boyfriend's sweet little cock. Fuck, it was awful. When assholes bleed, they _bleed_. It got to a point where it felt like a blessing that I have IBS, because at least the diarrhea occasionally meant I wasn't pushing logs in the bathroom. I think that's the only reason I've stopped bleeding now. Things have had a chance to heal up."

"What's IBS?" Johnny followed up with, and learned all about irritable bowel syndrome, and why Mark preferred to avoid dairy on some days. 

Their back and forth didn't run out of steam, contrary to Johnny's expectations. It was as if, after years of saying the bare minimum to each other, they had a word target they needed to hit.

"Do you have an alcohol problem?" Mark asks a couple days later, while they're watching a movie on the TV, Mark in Johnny's lap. 

(Mark had bought something called a Chromecast, and now they watched movies and shows through his parents' Netflix subscription. Johnny had assured him he could get them their own subscription, but there was no point, Mark had said. His parents didn't even know what it was, and he doubted they remembered they were paying for it. They'd disowned him, the least they could do now was pay for him to see a movie.)

Johnny flushes while he speaks. It doesn't help that he's holding a can of beer right now. "If I don't, I'm well on my way. It's embarrassing. And yet I don't want to stop. I like how relaxed I feel when I drink."

"Do you think I'll develop an alcohol problem? They say it runs in families."

Mark had turned twenty-one recently. There had been no option for him to go out and celebrate, so instead he'd celebrated with Johnny, and in true American fashion, had gotten shitfaced. His youth had saved him from the worst of the hangover, and he'd been drinking regularly ever since. 

Does Johnny have a right to tell him to tone it down? 

"It's a possibility. Why are you drinking?" Johnny asks.

"Um... not sure why, to tell you the truth. Because I can. Because I want to feel mature. Something like that." Mark looks down at him, his gaze bright, even by the limited light of the movie they're watching. "Why are you celibate?"

Johnny's eyes bug, and he splutters in protest. "Celibate? I'm not celibate."

"Okay, sorry. I don't know the word for it. I just meant, why aren't you seeing anyone?"

Johnny wants to say that he is. He sees women all the time. None of them have ever made it to girlfriend status, sure, but some of them he'd see years at a time. And then, inevitably, they'd catch a boyfriend, and that would be that.

But he hadn't been seeing anyone, that first time Mark showed up on his doorstep. If he had been, he would've told her about Mark. And if he really thinks about it, he hasn't been with anyone since. That meant, what, at least four years of nothing. Jesus. When did this become his life?

"Is it because of the depression?" Mark asks, and there's no judgement in his voice. Johnny is left wondering if he's that transparent, or if Mark is the first person to really look at him in years.

"Yeah. I think it is, yeah." He's not even begun to acknowledge that he's sad, but with Mark, it's easy.

"So does this mean you've had sex before? Aside from with Minseo, I mean."

Johnny nods. "Yes."

"Always with girls?"

"Yeah, they were all girls. Have you been with a girl?"

"No, Hyuck was my first and only. Was it... was it fun?" Mark asks quietly, and he's gone slightly rigid in Johnny's lap, his chest barely moving with his breaths.

"Very fun. I love sex. Or at least, I used to."

"Oh. That sounds nice, actually. I wish sex was like that for me." He sounds envious.

"Maybe with your next boyfriend. Maybe you can skip out on the anal with him."

"Have you ever had a girlfriend where you never fucked her?"

"No," Johnny admits. He doesn't know if he'd be opposed to it, if that happened, but all of his partners had wanted it. 

"Did you fuck them in the ass?"

"Some of them, yeah, sure. Not all of them were interested."

"And that went well?"

"Well, it's still ass play. I got shit on my dick sometimes. She'd be sore sometimes. But nothing like what you described happened." Mark looks small and sad at that revelation, and Johnny feels sorry for having told him the truth. That expression, he's reminded of a seventeen-year-old Mark, getting rejected in Johnny's hallway. 

"Hey, hey, honey," Johnny says soothingly, rubbing a hand down the back of Mark's neck. Their movie is still playing, an upbeat teen movie about a girl overcoming her fears through dance, but neither of them are paying it attention. "That doesn't mean you're weird or wrong. I'm sure more people go through what you've gone through. Everyone's body is different, responds differently to things. It doesn't make you less."

Mark settles against Johnny's chest, and is quiet for the remainder of the movie.

\--

Mark graduates late, but with honours. Johnny bakes him a dairy-free cake, in the oven he's never used before. The thing is rock hard and nigh inedible, but Mark soaks it in Almond Dream and eats half of it, claiming he's never had a more delicious cake. He giggles when Johnny asks him to admit to the lie.

"What do you want for your graduation present?" Johnny asks, while binning the remainder of the cake. Mark might like him enough to down that monstrosity of a bake, but Johnny has more sense than that.

"Not sure if I want to tell you," Mark admits airily, and leaves the kitchen. Johnny doesn't force it, just cleans up and goes upstairs to work on his projects. Mark is already there, like he usually is lately, sitting criss-cross on his air mattress with his laptop across his knees.

"Johnny," he says, looking up. His expression betrays that he's been working up to this one, that he's been chewing on it for a while. Johnny braces himself.

"Do you think you could listen to my album?"

Johnny deflates. He doesn't know what he'd expected, exactly, but this wasn't it. This seems really easy, compared to what he'd built himself up to.

"You have a whole album?"

"Kind of. It's rough around the edges, and I think I'm going to have to get rid of a couple of the songs."

He hands Johnny his laptop. It's been decked out in stickers since Johnny gifted it to him, rainbow hearts lining a holographic illustration of two Asian men kissing. Johnny suspects it's two characters from a show, although he has no clue which one.

"I can't leave, I have to watch you listen to it. But please don't look at me while you're listening to it? I might actually die."

Johnny kicks at him, although there's no heat to it. "Don't act dramatic, it doesn't suit you."

He lets the album play through his speakers, because he wants to see Mark's reactions to individual songs, and the speakers have slightly better sound than his headphones anyways.

There's six songs total, and the whole lacks some cohesion. The mixing is very uneven, although he can hear Mark's beginner efforts to correct it. Overall, Johnny is impressed. It's raw-sounding, but in a good way. He hadn't paid much attention to the contents of the raps, too caught up in the production value, but certain moments painted such vivid emotion across Mark's features, that he wishes he could listen a couple more times.

"Why don't you let me master this one for you," Johnny suggests, as casually as he can muster. Like it wouldn't be a huge deal for Mark to hand over this creative project, that he's been carrying around with him for who knows how long. One song sounds suspiciously close to a re-working of the very first thing Mark had ever sent him, the silly one about driving with him in his car. Except this time, it had actually sounded hot. 

Mark is a grown-up, Johnny realises all at once. He doesn't know how he feels about that. It officially meant he'd missed nearly all of his childhood, but it also meant that he had a grown son, someone he could have conversations with as an equal.

"It's embarrassing dude," Mark says, shaking his head in refusal. Johnny reaches out and ruffles his hair. Maybe he'd be a kid for just a little while longer.

\--

Johnny thinks, if he has to listen to _Watermelon Sugar_ one more time, he might actually lose it. He tells Mark as much, who reminds him being dramatic is verboten in their household.

It's not so much the song, as it is the way Mark responds to it. He literally rolls around on the floor of the music room, sighs dreamily as he stares out the windows, and generally acts like a complete pain the ass.

"You're twenty-one. Stop acting like a lovestruck teenager," Johnny warns him, while reclined in his desk chair and trying to focus on the job offers in his messages.

"John. I will not, John. I will not," Mark responds, because he'd taken to calling him John. Johnny is convinced it's purely for the sake of driving him up the wall.

Mark rolls closer to him, until he can wrap himself around Johnny's ankles. "John," he moans underneath the desk, "Jooohn."

"What!" Johnny snaps. Why was having a kid great, again?

"I looked it up, and apparently it's common for queer kids to go through a belated adolescent phase. Because we've had to suppress ourselves for so long. So then, we have to go through puberty anyways, just belatedly. Usually it happens once we're around a guardian, or peer, that we've built up trust with."

Johnny looks underneath his desk, scowling at Mark. "If you think reading out Wikipedia articles underneath my desk is going to sweeten me to your bullshit, you're wrong. You're grown and you know better. Knock it off."

"But _Jooohn_ ," Mark whines, rolling onto his back. He's wearing a red and black striped shirt today, and although they had ordered the same size for every top while buying Mark a new wardrobe online, this one was decidedly too small. Which had instantly catapulted it to the top of Mark's favourite clothing items. 

It's hitching up now, revealing an expanse of pale stomach, which moves as Mark inhales and sings along to the chorus of Watermelon Sugar. Johnny blinks and looks away, sitting back up.

"Watermelon sugar, hiiigh. Watermelon sugar, hiiiiigh~"

"You're in love with Harry Styles. I get it. Go get your man and leave me in peace," Johnny suggests, eyes glued to his phone screen.

"Not him~" Mark sing-songs, getting up to his feet so he can swing along to the music, moving his shoulders this way and that.

"Who then. Have you patched things up with Hyuck?" Just the thought fills him with dread.

"What! No way man, never. Hyuck dumped me, I'm not going back to him."

Johnny doesn't point out that Mark had left Donghyuck little choice. Because Donghyuck had failed to support his son when he was experiencing a painful and embarrassing medical issue, for at least a year, maybe longer. Johnny hopes they never get back together, but doesn't breathe a hint of it, because it's none of his business who Mark dates. Not until that boy is being brought home and officially introduced.

"Then who, you little monkey."

"You wouldn't know him," Mark informs him, and waltzes out of the room.

\--

He figures out Mark's crush only two short days later, when he catches him watching an episode of Supernatural. Mark watching a show is nothing unusual, but it's the coochie eyes he's making at the screen. Johnny supposes Mark really is going through an adolescent phase, if he's developing earnest little crushes on fictional characters.

"You like one of those actors, don't you," Johnny observes casually.

"No," Mark denies too quickly, and the slight panic in his expression and entirely unsubtle attempt to angle the screen away from Johnny gives him away completely.

"Which one is it?" Johnny asks, crouching next to Mark so he can peer at the screen. "They're both very pretty."

"I don't like either of them," Mark says decidedly.

Johnny gets comfortable on the floor next to Mark's air mattress, and leans forward, trying to follow along with the plot of the episode. "Then who? Is it still one of those dudes from that Chinese show, the one with all the floaty robes and the headbands." 

Mark groans in embarrassment. Johnny had figured out who the sticker on his laptop was supposed to represent, and had teased him half to death about it. "The Untamed is a good show! I mean, it's kinda not, but it is."

"I see. But this show is top class, is it?" He can already tell it isn't. 

"No," Mark admits dully, "it's actually pretty tacky. But... um. I like one of the characters."

"That one?" Johnny asks, pointing at the one with the pouty frown. "Or is it this one," he suggests, pointing at the one with the expressive brow.

"... it's their dad. The one I like," Mark admits, staring up at the ceiling.

Johnny goes still. He'd been the one teasing Mark, so how did this end up with him feeling like he'd had the rug pulled out from underneath him. "Oh," Johnny replies, feeling hollowed out. "Uh. Is he a nice dad?" he asks, asking it just to ask something, trying to figure out how to get this interaction to end.

"Um. He's kind of absent, I think? Kind of gruff. But he really loves his sons and tries his best for them. Their mom died and he's been looking after them ever since."

"That's nice. Hey, I'm gonna go grab a yoghurt." Because that's a thing their fridge contained now, yoghurt. "You want some?"

Mark shakes his head, and lets it sink in between his shoulders, shuttering him out, looking just as relieved as Johnny feels that the interaction is over.

In the kitchen, he googles the dad, hoping there will be no physical resemblance, and grimaces over the results he gets. John. His name is literally John. Johnny wants the floor to open up and swallow him whole. Why did he have to have the least subtle kid in the universe. 

There's also so much incestuous porn in the related searches. Johnny wonders which thing Mark had come across first, the show or the porn.

\--

Things become a little awkward between them after that. Johnny misses their easy camaraderie, misses Mark in his lap while watching bad movies. But he doesn't make the first move. He's afraid to.

It's not that Mark hasn't confessed to him before, he has. But it had kind of felt like a thing in the past, something he was being told because Mark needed to feel accepted in all aspects after being so brutally rejected by his parents.

"I'm sorry for still liking you," Mark eventually mutters. He's underneath Johnny's desk again, playing Animal Crossing on his brand new Switch. 

(Johnny had always scoffed at parents who bought their kids too many gifts, but now that his is living with him and has slowly laid claim to his entire heart, he's beginning to see how addictive it is. He's missed nearly all of Mark's life, so it's only fair he gets to buy him as many gifts as he wants now, gets to have as many moments of sparking joy as he can afford. It feels like a treat to himself, making Mark happy, seeing that slightly incredulous joy bloom on his features.

Besides, Mark actually needed most of the stuff Johnny has bought him. And the mind grows dull without entertainment. So he definitely also needed the Switch.)

"Have you ever stopped liking me?" Johnny asks after several minutes. He's still working, but his focus feels shattered.

"No. Um. No, I haven't. It's why I started talking to you less. I kind of hoped, it would go away by itself that way. I'd go into our Insta convo all the time, reread your words. For a long time, that was the best part of my day. I wrote you embarrassing confessions. And would delete each one, of course, because I knew it'd mean the end. That you were barely tolerating me as it was. 

And then I told myself to get a grip, to stop building you up in my head like that, to look elsewhere. So, Donghyuck." There's a shifting sound underneath the desk, like Mark is changing positions. "I think we were actually really good for a while, like, before we tried to lose our v-card to one another? But fuck, lately I keep thinking: did I actually ever love that kid? Or did I love the idea of him. Was he my shot at normalcy, and I just clung to that, because I knew I had to. 

Maybe that was the basis for all our issues. Maybe he could tell he didn't have all of my heart, but could never figure out who the other guy was. That time when we went to IHOP, when I got back from that the next day, that was our first fight. Because where the fuck had I been all night? Why was I smiling like that? 

Man, and the thing is, I could've just told him about you. Would it really have made such a big difference? My parents, it kinda made sense that I didn't mention you. But there was no reason to keep it from Hyuck. I just, I didn't actually wanna tell him, I guess. I wanted to keep you all to myself. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, it would probably have made a huge difference. I didn't want other people's opinions on it because I knew I wouldn't be able to hide how I really felt about you, not forever. And I knew they'd disapprove. But maybe Hyuck would have accepted it about me...? The way you have. I didn't even give him a chance to make up his mind."

But that's the rub, isn't it. Johnny hasn't made up his mind, doesn't actually know if he approves. He loves Mark, but he doesn't want Mark to be _in_ love with him. It feels wrong, like Johnny has failed him. 

He wonders if he should have sent Mark away by now. But send him where? Nearly everything Mark currently owns has been gifted to him by Johnny. He has no money to call his own. When he gets a job, he'll still have to work a while to save up for the security deposit on a rental, for a car. 

But ultimately, the biggest reason that he's still here, is that it's what Johnny wants. Johnny had been out on his own at a vulnerable age, and it messed him up, clearly. 

He would like for Mark to have a better shot at things. But was he really the better option? What right did Johnny have to have influence over Mark's life like this — because he produced a sperm cell once, two decades ago? It seems insane.

There's a hand on his shin, and he looks down in between his legs, at Mark's face. It still seems a bit too small and eager for his frame, like it belongs to someone younger. His feelings of guilt increase.

"You know, I looked it up. I wondered about what was wrong with me, when I first started liking you, so I looked it up. It's called 'genetic sexual attraction' and it happens sometimes, when relatives don't grow up together. Because I like your genes, or something. And I didn't learn to be repulsed by you as a toddler."

"Mark," Johnny says, feeling world-weary, "please stop quoting Wikipedia at me. That doesn't explain this. That doesn't make it okay."

He regrets the words as soon as he's said them, because Mark's brow furrows, confusion warring with pain. "But I thought..." He looks at Johnny in a way he's never looked at him before, and Johnny wants to take it back. But he can't. He hates hurting Mark, but maybe this is a necessary hurt.

When Johnny says nothing else, Mark's eyes go shuttered and he retreats, crawling out from underneath the table. Johnny's heart is screaming at him — make it right, hold him, make him feel safe — but he stays limply in his seat. 

They would figure out their way back from this, he thinks, watching Mark leave. For now, it's more important that he rejects the kid plainly.

He has to. It's the right thing to do.

\--

Mark's drinking kicks up a notch, and the nightmares are back in full force. He doesn't wake up from them anymore, probably too sedated by the alcohol. Just writhes in his sleep. Johnny watches him from the doorway, and feels strangely helpless.

Every day, his resolve feels shakier. Mark had shown him the most secret part of his soul, and gotten rejected. Had been told that it should've stayed buried. Was that okay? Was that the better path? It's difficult to stay determined when he sees the havoc it wreaks on the kid. Even if he continues working on his music dilligently, and he's thrown himself into the job search.

He's performing, but not thriving. It's a bitter echo of how Johnny has been living his life.

When Mark slides into his lap again, it's a relief. The first moment of genuine connection between them in weeks, and Johnny doesn't care that Mark isn't even pretending to watch the movie. He has a hand slung over his face, cheek pressing into Johnny's chest.

"I don't know how to stop feeling this way," he says, quietly. "If I knew how, I would've done it already."

Johnny pets Mark's hair. "You've been having nightmares again."

He can feel the rejection in Mark's frame, the way his shoulders stiffen. "Huh– what are you talking about?"

Johnny frowns. "There's no need to hide it from me. I've been hearing you for months. It'd gotten better recently, but now they're back, every night–"

Mark jerks in understanding, and hides his face with a little more conviction. "Oh, um. Wow, this is embarrassing. Those... they're not nightmares? They're dreams. Uh... about you."

Johnny freezes. The groaning, the harsh breathing, the soft cries into his pillow whenever Mark woke up. Had he been listening to Mark _jerk it_? 

It's in that moment that the worst thing so far happens: Johnny's body responds. He forgets to breathe for a couple of moments as he feels his dick fill, horrified but mostly incredulous. But there is no denying it. 

It must be– it must be a culmination of not having had anyone physically close in years, of finally getting through the fog of depression, of thinking about masturbation because of Mark reframing his experiences in a sexual light. Whatever the reason, Johnny doesn't want this, he truly doesn't. Shame slams into him, and he closes his eyes, soundlessly willing his body's arousal away.

He doesn't want to shove Mark off, because then he'd be acknowledging that cuddling is no longer an innocent thing they do, that he's gone and sullied it. Aside from those chaste pecks, that one time, Mark has never made an advance on him. At least, he doesn't think he has? Maybe Johnny has just been really fucking blind, this entire time. 

Mark, oblivious to his distress, relaxes and settles in, body warm and heavy against Johnny's front.

"I'm sorry for being distant lately," he murmurs. "I wasn't trying to be, I just felt... but then today, I wanted to listen to one of your records, and I found something."

He reaches into the pocket of his pyjama pants, lifting his hips for better access, and Johnny can only wish that Mark would stop squirming so much.

Three scraps of paper are produced, and it's not until Mark unfolds one that Johnny realises what he's looking at. The notes Mark left taped to his door, all those years ago. Johnny had slipped them into the sleeve of his _Abbey Roads_ copy, gifted to him by his dad when he first started practising the piano.

"Even back then, I was too much," Mark observes, tone playfully self-deprecating. He looks at Johnny then, and in his gaze lies immeasurable fondness. "Why did you keep these?"

Should Johnny tell him the whole truth? Would that hurt him. He'd already hurt him, though. What was one more thing.

"At first I kept them because it was too much mental strain to throw them away. Not because it came from you, I literally couldn't deal with taking out my trash. That sounds pretty stupid now, but I think I was going through a rough spot. Not that I realised that, then."

He expects Mark to get upset. These notes had been the only physical thing in the world that he owned from his son, and he'd considered them with no more regard than he did any other piece of junk mail.

But that's not what happens. He speaks, and sounds fond still: "But then you decided to keep them. When was that?"

Johnny frowns. "Uh. I don't fully recall, time kind of moved in a blur back then. It was after you sent me those audio files. Those short raps you did for me? After the first two. Yeah, I think that's how it went."

Mark leans in and presses a kiss to his cheek, and then wraps his arms around his shoulders, holding on so tightly. "Please tell me we're going to be okay. I'm sorry for loving you wrong. Please, just, if you can... forgive me."

He sounds so vulnerable, it makes Johnny feel ill. But however twisted, this is also the first time Mark has told him he loves him. Multiple unnamed emotions are warring within chest.

"Honey, oh," Johnny says into his ear, quick to soothe, back to petting his head. "There is nothing to forgive. I know you don't mean to."

His arousal is subsiding, because Mark is distressed, and he feels intense relief. It had just been a momentary lapse in judgement. It would never happen again. He would make sure of that. 

They were going to find their way back to being okay, together.

"You won't stop talking to me?" Mark whispers.

"Of course not," he says in response, "I would never. I could never. I promise."

\--

They drink a lot that evening, both relieved at the air being cleared. There's an unspoken excitement to go back to how things were. 

It's mindless; jokes and jabs that go nowhere, pinned over a running commentary on the movie marathon they've got going on. Both of them are sprawled out on the living room floor, surrounded by empty beer cans and half-emptied bags of chips. Johnny'd made the mistake of letting Mark pick the snacks during their most recent bout of online grocery shopping, which resulted in them owning three different flavours of Cheetos, and the dust of all three of those flavours are currently decorating Mark's face and fingers.

"I shouldn't be eating all these damn Cheetos," Mark complains repeatedly, while shoving more of them into his mouth, "my guts are gonna be a mess tomorrow."

Johnny relentlessly makes fun of him for that, until Mark is giggling and squirming in embarrassment, begging him to stop. But when Johnny stops, he just makes another comment that begs more teasing. Johnny isn't sure it's on purpose, until he catches sight of Mark's twinkling eyes.

"Brat," Johnny comments.

He feels the most free and relaxed he has in years.

\--

Even though Mark has a solid degree, there are simply no jobs for him. Every place he applies to is a cold email, and if they do invite him for a Zoom interview, it's with the request to apply again in a couple of months. 

Because right now they're downsizing. Right now, everywhere is downsizing.

His frustration is palpable, and Johnny feels for him. That ache of wanting to work, but not being able to. He watches the tension in Mark rise and rise, and wishes he could fix this.

"Oh– fuck this!" Mark yells after weeks of fruitless searching, slamming his laptop shut. Johnny is startled, if for the sole reason that he's never heard Mark yell before.

He watches Mark stalk from the room, and hears him grabbing the car keys downstairs. Johnny has been going out once a week to start the car, to keep its battery from dying. They sit in it together sometimes, and talk about what they miss about society, before. Places they're excited about visiting, one day.

"Mark! Where are you going?" he shouts.

"To get a job!" Mark yells back, and slams the front door shut, hard enough that for a split second, Johnny is convinced the glass will shatter. 

He jogs over to the window, sliding it up so he can look down at the street, where Mark is comically jabbing his feet into the concrete as he's walking off, like he's trying to punish the road for existing.

"You forgot your mask, you dummy!" Johnny yells after him. But Mark doesn't hear him.

\--

The job Mark ends up getting is at McDonald's. Because, to quote him: "I knew those vultures would hire me no matter what."

Johnny doesn't love it — it might be deemed essential work, but it's a high-traffic job with minimal pay. He's vaguely worried Mark is going to catch corona and die. Johnny has insurance — at a price point that hurts to pay every month — but Mark has nothing. He begins to wonder how difficult it would be to adopt an adult.

"Why don't you just work for me, kiddo? I can teach you the ropes, make you really good. We can both work from home that way."

Mark takes him up on the offer of learning more producing skills, but he doesn't quit the fast food job.

\--

"Worst day _ever_ ," Mark complains pitifully, as he slouches through their front door. Johnny had been in the middle of fixing their dinner — he did it all by himself nowadays, because Mark worked ridiculous double-shifts almost every day, because the little idiot kept asking for them. He rubs his hands on his apron and squeezes Mark when he walks into his arms.

"Hey, you're home early. What happened. Drama, intrigue? Lay it on me."

Mark's voice is muffled against his chest. "The soft-serve machine exploded, a toilet exploded, and then a toddler exploded on both ends. All within five minutes of each other. I was in the middle of cleaning up the first mess, when _Craig_ –"

Mark falls silent for a second, having to collect himself. Johnny is already well-acquainted with the concept of Craig, a much-despised individual in their household, usually referred to as 'the most useless piece of shit manager to ever grace this earth'.

"–fucking Craig starts screaming at me, at the top of his lungs, saying I was the slowest and dumbest person he's ever seen. I thought I was about to have kittens he was so rude, fuck. I just walked out, it was crazy. You should've seen his eyes bug! I just couldn't take one more second of his shit, and his stupid freckly face. Like where does this kid get off, he's only a year older than me, what the hell. Just because his mom is a branch manager? But fuck, I probably shouldn't have walked out mid-shift like that. I screwed everyone over. Sam, Max, Robin, those poor girls. Still stuck there with Craig."

Johnny kisses the top of Mark's head, and continues hugging him. Mark is a sweet kid. Most others would've been thrilled to make Craig sweat a little.

Johnny, personally, wants to kick Craig's ass. But he'd been getting back into a workout routine recently — thanks to Mark teaching him how to use an app, so he could do it right there in their living room — and so the fight didn't exactly sound fair.

"Sit down, have a beer. Have some dinner once it's ready. You'll feel better."

"Thanks dad," Mark mutters tiredly, and sinks into a chair at the kitchen table, resting his face on his arms. Johnny blinks at him, dumbstruck.

Mark sits back up with a jerk, and stares at Johnny with wide eyes.

"Oh," they say in unison. And then both laugh awkwardly, again in unison.

"Fuck, you really are my kid," Johnny comments, and grins from ear to ear, because he can't suppress it.

Mark grins back at him, and for another moment it seems like this is the end of the interaction, but then Mark bounds into his arms and hugs him so tight that Johnny loses his breath for a second.

"Love you dad," he says fiercely.

"Love you too, squirt."

\--

After dinner, they're both unusually tired. Something about the magic of their newly affirmed importance to one another had made the meal's atmosphere loaded, but neither spoke much. They just basked, and exchanged shy grins.

So it's a bit of a letdown when Mark throws himself onto his mattress later that evening, teeth and hair freshly brushed after his evening shower, and hits the floor instead of a nice cushion of air. Johnny can hear the smack and subsequent 'oof' with a clarity that makes his own bones ache.

"Oof, buddy. What happened? You okay?"

A pained groan. "No. Didn't land right." Some shuffling noises, followed by another pained groan. 

Johnny gets up and pads over to go observe the damage. Mark is lying on his side, in a weird contortion.

"Wait, how bad is it?" Johnny asks, crouching next to him so he can place a hand on his shoulder, rubbing it.

Mark squirms, trying to survey the damage. "I'm not hurt-hurt, I don't think. Hit my hip pretty bad. Probably going to have an angry bruise tomorrow."

Johnny helps him up to his feet, carefully, and makes him walk a few steps. Mark is limping something fierce, but nothing appears to be sprained or broken.

"Ow," he complains in a sad little voice. 

Johnny feels for the kid. Today had been– well, it'd been something. "Come to bed. I'm going to go grab an ice pack from the freezer."

It's Johnny's fault. If he hadn't put buying Mark his own bed on the backburner, then this wouldn't have happened.

He finds Mark in his bed, still awkwardly twisted. Johnny pushes his sleep shirt up and starts icing his hip, the pack wrapped in a towel so he doesn't burn skin.

"Hmmn," Mark moans gratefully, enjoying the relief of the ice. Johnny rubs his side, his shoulder, and Mark melts into the sheets, still groaning quietly.

Johnny gets hard again. He freezes, not sure a person has ever felt more disgusting than he does in this moment. Why? What in the everloving fuck is wrong with him? Mark is turning his upper body to look up at Johnny, showing off the line of his waist.

"No, don't stop yet," he pleads lazily, "it feels so good."

Johnny just looks at him, observes him the way a stranger might. His waist is narrow, his face cute. He has broad shoulders and an angular face, all the baby fat gone from his cheeks. In short, he's stunning. Johnny hates himself for noticing. Mark had indeed grown up into a little heartbreaker, he thinks bitterly to himself.

Mark rolls over fully, and spots the obvious tent in Johnny's pyjama pants. He looks at it for a couple of moments, awestruck. Johnny starts getting off the bed; he just wants to be away. There's a bottle of whiskey downstairs that's calling for him to go finish it. 

A slender hand closes around his wrist, silver quick and surprisingly strong.

Johnny shivers. Why does it feel good to be touched right now. "Let go," he begs quietly.

Mark swallows once, twice. His eyes are like fire-y coals. "Please?" he whispers, and there's so much fragility there. "No one needs to know."

"No," Johnny replies, not allowing any hesitation into his voice, and Mark crumples. He lets go, all strength draining from his grip.

It's a bitter march to the bottom of the bottle, sat at his kitchen table. Johnny doesn't feel any better. If anything, he feels worse. When Mark joins him halfway through, he also pours him a shot. They are both fucked up, which means they should both get the same medicine.

When Mark slips into his lap, he doesn't push him away. Because how many more times is Johnny supposed to break this kid's heart. He's not straddling him sideways the way he usually is, instead chose to sit chest to chest.

Mark is murmuring into his ear, he realises after a couple of beats. It takes him a while to decipher the words. The alcohol must be hitting him harder than he realised.

"Why is it wrong? Why? I want to know, tell me," Mark is asking, his fingers pushing through Johnny's hair, pushing it back and away from his forehead. A kiss is pressed to his widow's peak, to his temple, on his cheek, close enough to his mouth to brush the corner of it. He becomes aware of the pressure of Mark's ass on his crotch, but he's no longer hard. Johnny has always been sensitive to whiskey dick. Maybe that's why he'd grabbed the hard stuff this time.

Johnny looks at him, forehead creased with unhappiness. "Shouldn't. 'S just not right. 'S just not," he points out, words slightly slurred.

"Why?" Mark asks plaintively. "Says who?"

"Dunno honey... people. Society."

"Society also says I'm a disgusting sinner who shouldn't exist," Mark reminds him. And, yeah, that's true. But–

"They don't get me. But if you like me, if we both want it," Mark says, so softly, nearly brushing their lips together, "then why can't you make love to me?" 

He's kissed then, over and over, gentle touches that make his lips tingle, the ghost of happier memories. When he still connected with people. Mark's kisses are like before. Barely there, unsure.

Johnny shakes his head, alcohol-slow. "Shouldn't," he repeats, reminds them both, and then takes hold of Mark's face and kisses him properly, deepening the kiss. 

He's a good kisser. Experienced and tactile. Mark moans helplessly and sinks into him, arms slung over Johnny's shoulders.

Johnny kisses him until he has him whimpering. It reminds Johnny that Mark has never had an experienced partner. If he was eager before, he's becoming putty in his hands now.

"Good?" he asks gruffly, once he's kissed Mark until he's gone pliant and hazy with it, his breathing laboured. It feels good for him, but at the same time it doesn't, his stomach churning with shame and anxiety.

Mark is licking his lips, like he's chasing the taste of Johnny on them. "Feels wrong but I like it... like when I know I shouldn't be opening another beer."

He pushes his body against Johnny's, grinding against him. He nuzzles him, begging another kiss. Johnny gives it to him, taking his time with it, hand cradled over the back of Mark's skull to keep him close. He's learning how Mark likes to be kissed, lets himself be guided by the shameless little sounds spilling from his son's mouth. It becomes the slightest bit easier, although not by much, to push his shame aside when he falls into the routine of trying to please his partner, the give and take deeply familiar to him. 

He could just shove Mark off of him. He should.

Mark starts grinding down on him with more precision, pushing his erection against Johnny's broad thigh, a little awkwardly because his hip is stiffening with pain. But he doesn't give up, chasing his pleasure.

"Like this?" Johnny murmurs, placing his hands on Mark's hips to help pull him down with more force. He wonders if Mark is going to get off like this, right here in his lap.

Mark moans and nods. His cutely rounded teeth are dug firmly into his bottom lip, and there's sweat beading on his forehead. He looks so concentrated, the way he does when he's making music, or watching an intense episode of one of his shows. Johnny's heart is overflowing with fondness, love, self-hatred.

"Uh- I'm so wet," he whispers, like he's confessing, like he wants Johnny to tease him for it.

Johnny pulls down his pyjama shorts with one finger, stunned at the sight of his son's flushed erection, this secret thing he's getting to see. It's glistening with precome, like Mark had said. He presses a fingertip to the head, and it's the first time he's touched another's man's dick, but he knows how they work.

Mark makes a keening sound, and seems to lose all sense of shame and self, his mouth dropped open as he moans loudly on every exhale, eyes trained on where Johnny is touching him.

Johnny pulls his finger away, and a string of precome follows it. "Din't even know boys could get this wet," he says softly, words mushing together a little bit because of the alcohol in his system. Mark lets out a sobbed moan, his hips jerking with the effort of keeping still, of letting Johnny touch him as he wants.

Who brings the sticky finger up to his tongue, and licks it clean, keeping eye contact. To his surprise, it tastes different to his own. Less bitter, muskier, saltier. Or maybe it's been a while since he's tasted his own.

Mark makes his most desperate noise yet, tears gathering in his eyes. He's looking at Johnny like his every fantasy from the last half decade has just come to fruition, his words mindlessly falling from his mouth, like he doesn't even know what he's begging for. "Please– oh God."

"What?" Johnny prompts him.

Mark brings down a hand to take a hold of himself and starts stroking, his hand moving nervously, pace uneven. He's smaller than Johnny, the tip just peeking out from his grip on every downstroke, and Johnny finds he loves this part of him, too. 

"Wanna come," Mark begs, eyes fixed on Johnny's lips, "fuck, your mouth is so beautiful– wanted you for so long, you're so beautiful."

Johnny pushes Mark's hand away and takes hold of him, shivering at the smooth and silky feeling of his erection, at the intense warmth coming off of it. He starts jerking him off steadily, a little harshly, ignoring it when Mark jerks and squirms with overstimulation.

His lips part soundlessly when he starts coming, his hands pushing Johnny's sleep shirt up. They both watch the spurts of come land on Johnny's stomach, a fast and high arching spurt followed by increasingly weaker ones, until Mark's release is dribbling onto Johnny's pyjama bottoms.

Johnny is breathing heavily, watches the glistening trails of come slide down his skin, his round stomach. He looks up at Mark, feeling lost, unanchored. Where do they go from here? They just had sex. He knows what Mark looks and sounds like when he's coming. There's no coming back from this.

"Da– Johnny," Mark whimpers, sounding just as lost. He looks young, and scared, and Johnny is quick to soothe him, pulling him into a hug.

"You're okay," he says, breath warm against Mark's ear. "Shh."

Mark lets himself be soothed easily, melting into Johnny's touch. He just lets himself be held for a while, and then kisses the side of his neck, caresses him, each new touch confirming the boundary they've left behind.

Mark sits back up, and slides down to the floor. It's a relief on Johnny's legs, which had begun to lose sensation. He's right back in between them, looking up at Johnny with worship in his eyes.

"My favourite part on you," Mark murmurs, sliding his fingers through his own release, effectively petting Johnny's stomach. He slides his hands up further, cupping Johnny's pecs underneath his sleep shirt, squeezing them. "I hope none of this goes when you get back into shape," he sighs, leaning in to kiss at Johnny's stomach.

Johnny flushes, pushing up into Mark's touch despite himself. Even when his depression became more evident in his body, he still did well for himself. But to be so nakedly desired is new to him. Women didn't look at him like this, didn't talk to him like this. He feels objectified, in a way that feels thrilling and new.

"Yeah?" he breathes, making loose fists in Mark's beautiful black hair, keeping him close.

"Yeah," Mark whispers, nuzzling his skin, licking it. Loving him. His gaze is dark and unfathomable, when he looks up at Johnny.

Johnny feels happy. He feels sick with it.

**Author's Note:**

> written as a gift for my spectacular baby girl. you absolute goddess, ilu
> 
> [twitter](https://mobile.twitter.com/linnhuh)


End file.
